Accident Investigation Bureau, AIB, has concluded the review of its regulations, aimed at increasing aviation safety in Nigeria.

The two-day exercise was concluded in Lagos with inputs from stakeholders drawn from aviation, law enforcement, insurance and the judiciary.

AIB Commissioner and Chief Executive Officer, Akin Olateru, said the review of AIB Regulations 2016, was necessitated by the need to conform with changes in global aviation, saying this was the way they could learn and grow the industry because they don’t know it all.

Olateru maintained that the purpose of accident investigation was not to apportion blame but to unravel the root cause, in order to prevent its recurrence.

He said the AIB was critical to safety and required adequate funding to discharge its statutory responsibilities.

The commissioner also appealed to other aviation agencies to continue to cooperate with the bureau to achieve safer skies that would encourage more Nigerians to embrace air travel.

Also speaking, Director-General of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, NCAA, Captain Muhtar Usman, lauded the contributions of the AIB in improving safety through the issuance of safety recommendations.

Usman said: “out of a total of 37 safety recommendations that were issued to the NCAA, 29 were fully implemented, two partially implemented and one yet to be implemented.

“On the remaining five, the NCAA did not agree with the safety recommendations and had provided reasons.

“Recently, the NCAA had forwarded the status of implementation of the three outstanding safety recommendations to the committee.

“The safety recommendations that the NCAA had implemented had assisted in improving our processes, led to the development of new ones and amendment of existing procedures.

“It had also led to amendment of regulatory requirements and overall strengthening of our safety oversight obligations.”

He noted that the NCAA was willing and ready to cooperate and continuously improve the existing partnership with the bureau to ensure safe skies within Nigeria.